what i did today

I feel silly writing about a book that to me is not even a book.  I’ve sent it to a few people with a few disclaimers:

• I know it’s bad writing.  Being able to get 55K words on paper and writing are two different things.  My goal was to get the story on paper and  hopefully reach 50K words.  I did both of those.  Quality writing was never really part of the deal although at times I did try.  Other times I simply got words on paper.
• I didn’t re-read the beginning of the book as I was writing so there are a lot of continuity errors.  A few people have different names later in the book.  Their past changes.  It’s all a little sketchy at times.
• I don’t want to give what happens away, but sometimes I don’t agree with what the characters say and/or do.  I know that sounds weird as I wrote it but at times the characters did what they wanted to do and I couldn’t do much about it.  Man, I know I sound crazy but it’s true.

I thought I would feel very accomplished at the end.  But the past 18 hours or so I’ve really just felt not-enough.  There aren’t enough words to actually publish it, the writing stinks, no one will like it.   And really, I just feel like this is a beginning.  It’s sort of like a piece of clay could be formed into a cube and yet, to turn it into a house would require the actual work.  Right now, I just have a clay cube, something that a lot of people could do.  Few could and will actually work to turn it into a masterpiece.  But as a friend said, no matter what, you wrote a novel.  Good or bad, there are characters and a story and now it’s on paper.

Just a few facts:

• I started this end of October/beginning of November.  It’s all Melissa’s fault.  It took 7-8 months to complete.
• Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series gave me hope that I could do it.  Something about writing in first-person did the trick.
• First draft is 55K words, 99 pages printed in single-space.
• I still have no idea what I’d name it.
• It’s a romance.  I’m clueless on specific genres after that.  I say it’s a romance but it’s more about the journey a girl takes fighting through her past to love someone in her present.
• I listened to Clair de Lune a lot in the beginning while writing.  Other than that, I wrote in silence because I could think better.
• I saw a guy at Disney that made me smile because he reminded me so much of my lead male character.  I was tempted to stop and take a picture of him.
• I still don’t know what the lead character looks like.  I never described her.
• Scott helped me a lot at the beginning of the book.  I remember one night we talked for hours about it.  After that, we’ve barely talked about it.  He says he may or may not read it.  He hates to read.
• I’ve sent it to 4 or 5 people to read.  I hope they are honest but not brutal in their reviews.
• I did my best brainstorming  just before I fell asleep.  I can’t count the number of times I rolled over and typed something in my notes on my iPhone.  Actually, I probably could since I still have them all.

And I thought I’d share some pictures…evidence of my writing.

Notes everywhere

Timelines and more timelines

Drawings

Edited pages. Melissa did edit a few chapters for me.  (ty, lis!)

So that’s it.  Kind of my brain dump of my non-novel.

Or at least the first draft. I hope I make it to the second.

Posted via email from Amy’s posterous

I’ve had a thing for sunsets lately.  This evening didn’t disappoint.

A few things going on in the Bennett Household this week.

• Scott is on a missions trip with our youth group in Georgia.  Sounds like they are having a good time.
• Meanwhile, I’m dealing with the first week of summer break with the girls by myself.  They did really well playing together today only driving me crazy by how much they wanted to eat.  Oh my word.
• The pool liner installation got postponed until today because the rain backed everything up last week.  Then the guys that came today thought it wasn’t leveled enough/was too rusted to put the liner in.  Their boss came and said they could do it so they’re coming Thursday.  It’s either risk it or pay at least 3K for a new pool.  I’m willing to take the risk.
• Lexi’s pageant is this weekend.  We have everything but her shoes which we might venture out tomorrow night to find some that she doesn’t complain about.
• I’m working on the last big scene for my book.  It seems to be coming very slowly and painfully.  Pretty much like the rest.

Other than that, I’m pretty much in survival mode trying to get my work done during the day, the kids sane, entertained and fed, the house in some sort of order and a little bit of me time at the end of the night.

Somehow with all the new furniture and decorating around the house, my office has been last.  Which doesn’t make a lot of sense since I spend at least 30 hours a week in it working and I would suspect a good 10 more for personal stuff.

Ever since IKEA has landed in Charlotte, we’ve made a few great purchases at regular intervals and for some reason Scott was itching to go this past week.  So Saturday we got up and he says let’s go get your office furniture today.  Um, ok?!

Here are a few before pictures.  They’re really good before pictures.  And by that I mean they’re really awful and anything I do to the room surely will make it look like an outstanding renovation.

You can see the kids’ art thing to the left was exploding with paper, crayons and yarn.  My work area was exploding with paper, electronic devices and wires.  And yes, even a Twilight poster back there.

Nothing about the room but the desk felt much like an office.  Three or four years ago it did seem like an office seeing that I was working on the playroom floor, living room couch, dining room table, kitchen counter.  ANYWHERE to get my work done with two very small kids.  Honest to goodness, I remember taking it to the bathroom one time.

Now with the kids a bit older, I can sit in one place most of the day and they can come to me when they need something.  And there’s a good reason their art stuff is in the same room.  It’s their “office” too and they tend to congregate with me in the same room.

I have no idea why I went into all that except to say it was once again time for an upgrade to my home office.

I had almost no clue what I wanted.  So I popped up the IKEA web site and got to work.  A few fights later, Scott and I had something to work with (don’t worry, we’re ok.  really). We took IL’s and kids with us and made it an entire afternoon trip.  The kids did the playground thing, we ate meatballs and browsed the showroom.  And I had a list about 20 items long by the end of it.  The basics of what we were getting was a sideboard cabinet to go under the window to hold my printers and then two large bookcases/cabinets for either side of the window.  We really wanted a cabinet for above the window to make it a full wall cabinet but none of the sizes would work.

By the time we get home and Scott had the first cabinet put together, we realize that we got the wrong large cabinets.  Now, at this point it’s 8:26 pm.  It’s the kids’ bedtime and we have church the next day, Scott is leaving for the youth missions trip the next day and he hadn’t packed a single thing and IKEA closed at 9pm.  And it’s a good 25 minute drive.  Also at this point?  I have removed everything from my office and all that junk is in the dining room.  I can’t work like that all week while he’s gone and I’m surely not putting it all back.  So we hop into the truck (as much as you can “hop into the truck” with two small kids) and *quickly* make it to IKEA with 10 minutes to spare.  I’ll let you do the math on that.

Our plan of attack was for me to return the cabinets while he raced to the self-serve aisle to get what we needed.  And if you know IKEA, you know it’s not really a quick in and out thing.  That place is HUGE.  But we are packed in the car at 9:10. The kids fall asleep on the way home.

Scott worked really fast and hard to get it all put together.  We realize though that the two smaller cabinets we bought to go on top of the big ones in order to make it a floor to ceiling cabinet would just be overwhelming.  So we decide to put them side by side and create another sideboard cabinet to store the kids’ art stuff and we’d get rid of that plastic drawer set.  He had to get up early to get those cabinets put together and I didn’t reorganize all that until late this evening.

I still have A LOT of cabinet room and I still have some organizational things to buy for it but it’s a really great start.  So without further adieu (Kudos if you actually read all this.  I certainly didn’t mean to type all that), here is my new office.

Now, the only downside is that it’s all BEHIND me when I’m at my desk and I don’t get to stare at it all day.

I have to be honest and say I’m pretty disappointed with the quality of the pieces.  There are nicks in the shelves and the doors/shelving don’t quite match up.  But there’s no way we could have afforded to get a custom set like this from anywhere else so I won’t complain too much.

I want to mention the glass/white doors are actually set up so you can put pictures or fabric in there and I plan to do that.  Scott said he saw one showroom place where they had blown up b&w photos of the kids which I think would be cool since this is one of the first things you see walking into the house.

OK, so I had no idea I could talk about my office for so long, but there ya go.  Oh wait.  If you want to spend even MORE time on this post, see if you can spot my Twilight book set on my bookcases.  You know it couldn’t be *my* office without some Twilight in it.  Now…where should I hang that Twilight poster??

Yesterday was bad. Today was better. Oddly I had some good dreams through the night. So much that when Scott was getting Emma ready for school, I was smiling in my sleep and he asked me what I was smiling about. I was half asleep and remember that I was going to explain…right after I woke up more and could speak coherently. Now, I don’t recall what it was but I knew I had had good dreams. Funny how that affects you after you’re awake. A few other (VERY RANDOM and UNRELATED) things that made my day good:

1 – I have to thank Amanda for recommending this Staying In Love series by Andy Stanley.  Really good.  If you are married, take the time to listen.

2 – These two t-shirts

3 – And this one is going to be very unrelated to the last two, but pictures of New Moon filming came out today and squeeeee.  Does that make me a BAD Little Miss Christian??